Improvement in base-balls



UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

DAVID HALE, OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

IMPROVEMENT IN BASE-BALLS.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 187,848, dated February 27, 1877; application filed February 10, 1877.

To all whom it may concern Be it known that 1, DAVID HALE, of Boston, in the county of Suffolk and State of Massachusetts, have invented an Improved Base-Ball, of which the following is a specification:

This invention has reference to a base-ball provided with a stitched cover composed of indiarubber cloth, the rubber. face of the cloth being outermost, making an impervious water-proof cover, and forming a ball which will not meet the bat with so dead a blow and one that will be less liable than a hard leathercovered ball to glance from the bat.

Figure 1 represents my improved ball in perspective; Fig. 2, one of the two covering pieces of india-rubber cloth, and Fig. 3, a section taken through the cover.

The interior of the ball is made, wound, and formed in any usual Way to give the ball the necessary weight and hardness, and when of the required weight, less the cover, and of the required hardness, it is covered with a cover made of india-rubber cloth cut into pieces shaped substantially as shown in Fig. 2, or in other well-known shape, and then the edges of the pieces forming the cover are stitched together by thread, as usual. This material for the cover is made by rolling a good quality of indie-rubber gum on a sheet of fabric of the desired strength, the rubber being preferably about one-thirty-seeond of an inch in thickness, and being vulcanized or not, but it is evident that the thickness of the rubber can be varied more or less.

In Fig. 3 the heavy'black line a represents the cloth, and the light space 1), between it and the line above it, represents the indierubber.

The stitches hold in this rubber-cloth cover as well if not better than in leather of equal thickness, and as the ball strikes a bat the blow is not so dead and stone-like as with most leather-covered balls, and the ball does not glance as easily from the bat.

This ball will not be affected by dampness, like an ordinary leather-covered ball.

I am aware that a wound ball has been covered with india-rubber gum and vulcanized.

I claim- As a new article of manufacture, a base-ball provided with a sewed cover of india-rubber cloth, substantially as described.

In testimony whereof I have signed my name to this specification in the presence of two subscribing Witnesses.

DAVID HALE.

Witnesses:

R. L. ROBERTS, L. H. LATEMER. 

